You wabbled about click bait and then took issue with how dominance is achieved, meanwhile literally every other sentence in the article is about perpetual grow

You wabbled about click bait and then took issue with how dominance is achieved, meanwhile literally every other sentence in the article is about perpetual growth, how perpetual growth a dangerous myth, how other games deal with it or how it's bad game design. You didn't address the myth of progress at all, which regardless of it's merits from a grand historical point of view certainly doesn't apply to individual nations which rise and fall all the time. You certainly didn't present any arguments against the idea that unthinking growth sometimes actually has consequences which Civilization games have actively been removing. All you said economic power and resource accumulation probably leads to dominance. But it's not dominance the article takes issue with, it's that dominance is represented only by growth which is why one sentence after your quote: "Only growth matters"